Virginia is guaranteed to face an escalating crisis if it does not take steps to reassess and change its approach to crime and imprisonment, according to a new policy brief released today by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI).

Thepolicy brief, Virginia's Justice System: Expensive, Ineffective and Unfair, calls the Commonwealth's juvenile and criminal justice policies and practices ineffective, inequitable and expensive, costing taxpayers billions each year. During a time when other jurisdictions are moving towards reducing their reliance on the criminal justice system to solve public health and drug addiction challenges, the policy brief finds that the justice system in Virginia is:

Ineffective: The "truth in sentencing" laws enacted in the 1990s have failed to impact crime or recidivism, and Virginia's aggressive stance on arresting people for drug violations has had no effect on reducing drug use, which has increased in recent years;

Expensive: In 2011 Virginia spent more than $94 million on drug arrests alone;

Unfair: Whites and African Americans use and sell drugs at similar rates. But in Virginia, while African Americans are about 20 percent of the population, they make up 44 percent of those incarcerated on a drug offense.

With the 8th highest jail incarceration rate in the U.S., 1 of every 214 adult Virginians is behind bars in county jails across the state; African-American youth over-represented in the juvenile justice system; and the Commonwealth's overreliance on incarceration - largely as a result of arresting Virginians for drug offenses - Virginia has an over-burdened correctional system unable to consistently provide services or safety. JPI's
policy brief also points to reforms that, if implemented, would result in relief for Virginians directly impacted by the justice system and taxpayers alike.

The policy brief is an overview of the Commonwealth's adult and youth justice system, which identifies areas of progress - like the recent effort to re-enfranchise formerly incarcerated residents with voting rights and other civil rights - and also identifies solutions to revise ineffective policies and practices of the past that remain in place.

The policy brief's findings will be presented tomorrow from 4 to 6 p.m. at Virginia Union University during a panel discussion on Virginia's justice system, featuring Dr. Lisa Moon of the VUU Center for the Urban Child; Gus Smith, Richmond resident and parent of Kemba Smith whose mandatory minimum sentence was commuted by President Clinton in 2000; Greg Carpenter, re-entry advocate for Jericho Ministries in MD; Marc Schindler, Executive Director of JPI; and Spike Bradford, Senior Research Associate at JPI and author of the new policy brief.

Virginia's Justice System: Expensive, Ineffective and Unfair is the first in a series of publications being released by JPI as a group of justice advocates and concerned stakeholders have been meeting in the Commonwealth to discuss pushing for reforms. The policy brief found that Virginia's jail and prison systems have grown substantially from the 1990s to the present day, eating up scarce resources that could be invested more effectively to create safe and productive communities. The state pays roughly $1.5 billion a year on its jails and prisons, a substantial part of which is devoted to locking up people who commit non-violent and drug offenses, who now make up over two-thirds of Virginia's prison and jail populations.

Like across the nation, despite the decrease in crime over the last two decades, the number of arrests in Virginia has remained relatively stable, decreasing only 1.1 percent. This can be attributed to a greater number of arrests for drug violations, which have increased 52 percent in the last decade